Art therapy is a popular method of psychological work with emotions. Fear, anxiety, guilt, anger, resentment - all these emotions are easier to express and realize with the help of artistic techniques that an art therapist uses in his work. Drawing, modeling, dancing, writing fairy tales and other ways of creative self-expression are available to anyone as a universal means of psychological hygiene.
Antistress
You can use art therapy yourself for anti-stress purposes. When irritation from minor troubles has accumulated during the day, the following art therapy techniques will help relieve stress:
- The best way to relieve stress is bulk materials: sand or small pebbles. Move your hand over the sand, pour it from palm to palm, feeling how the grains of sand touch the skin of your hands and flow out of it. If possible, bury your feet in the sand. 10-15 minutes of this game will help you disconnect from everyday worries.
- If you like to color, make yourself an anti-stress coloring book. Usually these are books with black and white images, in which there are many small details. As you paint them with pencils or felt-tip pens, focus on your activity. This will help the brain switch and take a break from the experience.
Emotion response
Sometimes emotions overwhelm us, and it is necessary to express them, but there is no suitable utensil for whipping at home. In this case, such techniques will help you.
- Use plasticine or clay. Plasticine will help you relax if you roll it aimlessly and wrinkle it in your hands. But you can also apply a purposeful psychological technique: blind your negative state, then mentally talk to him, then change the plasticine figure so that it turns from a negative state into a positive, helping one.
- Clay helps to cope with such strong emotions as distribution, anger, hatred. Clay lends itself well to change, destruction. Thanks to this, all your negative experiences can be transferred to clay and destroyed. And then smooth it out. After all, clay modeling is similar to smoothing.
- Paint your emotions with colors. It is better to take larger sheets and brushes (scraps of old wallpaper are perfect), you can paint with your hands. Sometimes it is therapeutic to paint the sheet carefully in black. Someone needs bright spots of paint to express an emotional state. Someone draws some kind of concrete figure, and then paints it over or transforms it (as in the case of modeling from plasticine). Choose the method that suits you best. After drawing, you can destroy the drawing (for example, if you were drawing fear or shame, or another unpleasant emotion), or hide it away so that one day you can find and remember what you were experiencing, try to understand yourself again. Another great option is to hang the drawing on the wall, and let it hang until it is relevant.
Self-study
Art therapy can be used for self-study as well. For example, if something bothers you, but you do not know what to imagine: what color, size, shape, texture, etc. it is. And then - embody your image in creativity. This technique can be applied to any object of the inner world.
Drawing, free body movement, sculpting and other creative techniques help to get in touch with your unconscious, see it, give it a voice and make it yours.
